20 Under 40

Last winter, when we came up with the plan to devote this issue to young fiction writers who we believe are, or will be, key to their generation, we took a look at a similar issue that we published, in 1999, titled “The Future of American Fiction.” Back then, we had to decide how we were going to decide: did we want to choose the writers who had already proved themselves or those whom we expected to excel in years to come? A good list, we came to think, should include both. The 1999 issue featured several novelists who were already firmly in the firmament, such as Michael Chabon, whose first novel, “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh,” had made him a star eleven years earlier (he went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for his novel “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” which was excerpted in that issue), and David Foster Wallace, whose masterpiece, “Infinite Jest,” had appeared in 1996. But we also included writers whose breakthrough books were still ahead of them. Junot Díaz was the author of a popular story collection, “Drown,” but “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, was still eight years away. Jonathan Franzen had published two well-received novels, but “The Corrections,” his enormously successful National Book Award-winning work (which was excerpted in that issue), wasn’t published until 2001. Jhumpa Lahiri’s first book, the story collection “Interpreter of Maladies,” came out the same month as the fiction issue and went on to sell millions of copies worldwide. This time, we chose twenty writers under the age of forty, and they, too, are at different stages of their careers. The youngest, Téa Obreht, is twenty-four, and her first book won’t be published until 2011. The oldest, Chris Adrian, is thirty-nine, and will publish his fourth book of fiction next year.

The habit of list-making can seem arbitrary or absurd, leaving the list-makers endlessly open to second-guessing (although to encourage such second-guessing is perhaps the best reason to make lists). Good writing speaks for itself, and it speaks over time; the best writers at work today are the ones our grandchildren and their grandchildren will read. Yet the lure of the list is deeply ingrained. The Ten Commandments, the twelve disciples, the seven deadly sins, the Fantastic Four—they have the appeal of the countable and the contained, even if we suspect that there may have been other, equally compelling commandments, disciples, sins, and superheroes. What we have tried to do, in selecting the writers featured in this issue, is to offer a focussed look at the talent sprouting and blooming around us. These writers (stories by eight of them appear here; twelve more will follow, one at a time, in the next twelve issues) are hardly the only gifted storytellers of their generation. Some terrific candidates were excluded solely because they didn’t have a new piece of fiction available by our deadline. Others, such as Dave Eggers and Colson Whitehead, would have been on the list had it come out last year; their only mistake was to be on the wrong side of our birthday cutoff.

But, as every writer knows, there can be magic in rules and conventions, and these twenty men and women dazzlingly represent the multiple strands of inventiveness and vitality that characterize the best fiction being written in this country today. There is the lyrical realism of Nell Freudenberger, Philipp Meyer, C. E. Morgan, and Salvatore Scibona; the satirical comedy of Joshua Ferris and Gary Shteyngart; and the genre-bending tales of Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss, and Téa Obreht. David Bezmozgis and Dinaw Mengestu paint clear-eyed portraits of immigration and identity; Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, ZZ Packer, and Wells Tower offer idiosyncratic, voice-driven narratives. Then, there are the haunting sociopolitical stories of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Daniel Alarcón, and Yiyun Li, and the metaphysical fantasies of Chris Adrian, Rivka Galchen, and Karen Russell.

The fiction being written in this country today is not necessarily fiction set in this country, or fiction by writers who were born in this country. Although all the non-native writers on our list have made a home for themselves in North America—some moved here as children, some as adults—the diversity of origins is striking: Nigeria (Adichie), Peru (Alarcón), Latvia (Bezmozgis), China (Li), Ethiopia (Mengestu), Yugoslavia (Obreht), and Russia (Shteyngart). These writers also turn out to have vocations beyond the crafting of fiction. Bezmozgis has directed a feature film. Adrian is training to be a pediatric oncologist and, like Morgan, studied at Harvard Divinity School. Galchen completed medical school at Mount Sinai. Li moved to the United States to pursue a Ph.D. in immunology. Meyer, before starting his novel, worked as a derivatives trader and drove an ambulance. Ferris wrote advertising copy. Scibona, at one point, worked for a bricklayer.

How did these twenty writers end up on this list? We were able to read at least one complete book or manuscript by each writer, and at least a portion of whatever work was coming next. In some cases, we saw an explosion of talent from the first chapter or story: a freshness of perspective, observation, humor, or feeling. In others, we saw a stealthier buildup of thought and linguistic innovation. Some were brilliant at doing one thing. Others made radical shifts of focus and style from one piece to the next. What was notable in all the writing, above and beyond a mastery of language and of storytelling, was a palpable sense of ambition. These writers are not all iconoclasts; some are purposefully working within existing traditions. But they are all aiming for greatness: fighting to get our attention, and to hold it, in a culture that is flooded with words, sounds, and pictures; fighting to surprise, to entertain, to teach, and to move not only us but generations of readers to come. ♦